In the spirit of Tony Bourdain, food as adventure. Try everything twice in case it was made wrong the first time. Eat without fear or prejudice.

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

DInner at Masa 14, DC

This post is a bit of a food porn post. Last Saturday night, I was invited to go to a dinner at DC's Masa 14 specially put together by their chef de cuisine, Antonio Burrell. It was amazing, specializing in pig and incorporating seasonal ingredients.We started with 4 appetizers. First up was a plate of flash grilled shishito peppers with bonito, goat cheese, and sherry vinegar.Next was a bowl of warm spicy chicharrones.Third was some grilled pig's kidneys. These were fantastic. The texture of the kidney was more akin to rare beef than the usual firmness of offal. I would say this ranks as one of the best iterations of kidney I've ever had.The final app was housemade sausage with wasabi mustard.The first course was spectacular: a piece of deep fried housemade scrapple, softshell crab, ramps prepared three ways, and mustard. Chef said he has some leftover pig heads around, so he decided to make scrapple.The second course was a hash made of BBQ pork cheek, a fried egg yolk on toast, and spring garlic.The third course was ramen in pork broth topped with pork belly, ribs, cracklings and morel mushrooms. The broth was really rich with piggy flavors. Fortunately, this was not a deep bowl of "ramen" as I was already getting stuffed.

Certainly, I had room for the fourth course, a crispy pave of pork saddle with baby vegetables, carrots & corn, and peppercress. The pork skin was wonderful, but I was happy to have some veggies at this point in the meal.Dessert was a dulce de leche ice cream with candied bacon, two ways. There was a piece of candied bacon on top and under the ice cream were bacon bits and peanuts.